Lynn Houghton, regional history curator at the Western Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections, says the bust likely was taken for the value of its metal.

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Westnedge was a surgeon in the Spanish-American War and died of typhoid fever in 1899. Houghton says his brother was Col. Joseph B. Westnedge, who died at the end of World War I. In 1921, Kalamazoo renamed West Street to Westnedge Avenue in honor of them.